Accent of the new audio guy

Yes. The whole point of the audio revamp was re-recording everything with new people.

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Thank you! I don’t know how to compare them to the previous actors, but the default male one sounds very clear to me.

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Yeah I actually like it more, too. It’s funny that before the revamp people would often complain about the old audio. Just goes to show you can’t please everyone. :sweat_smile:

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I quite like his voice, but if you don’t good news; the apiv2 recently had an update allowing script writers to access the old audio files as well. This might result in a script soon that allows for switching between the voices.

Everyone’s an accent expert now.

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I think a great possible solution to this would be to have a profile setting where you can select your default voice actor, like a phone assistant voice. And then also having the option to hear alternate pronunciations on any individual item

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I don’t use audio on WK, so I don’t really know what the previous voice sounded like, but the few words I tried sounded perfectly fine? I mean, he is definitely sounding the words as clearly as possible, which makes sense for a vocab resource. I have an electronic dictionary on my phone with some voice recordings, and it voices out words the same way.

Obviously, that’s stiffer than what you’d have in a normal conversation, but that’s the point, as far as I am concerned.

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The new Flaming Durtles app for Android allows you to select your speaker preference between the male one and the female one. If you have an Android you might wanna try it.

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Different people speaks differently. If you’re learning English by watching Trump’s speech you’d think all English speakers pronounce the name of the Vice President as “Mike Pounce”.

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:rofl: :rofl: you mean that’s not how it’s pronounced?

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to say this right from the beginning: the reason why i learn japanese is interests in linguistics and phonetics. i have put quite a lot of learning into how japanese pronuncation works (not that i can do it well) and it is not at all how people think it is just from getting taught kana.

like a couple things
fu - this is not a f sound, its more like a very breathy h sound
hi - especially hya hyo hyu are pronuncted with the same phoneme as the ch (as in Licht, Gedicht, Michael) in german
nn, g sounds are often done through nasalisation of vowels and not actually articulated

weak vowels (e.g. i, u) between hart consonants (e.g. t, k, p or end of word) are usually pronounced unvoiced, this can sound to an untrained ear as if they are dropped. thats why Masu, desu often sound like mas, des

the j sound it not the name as in english

so with other words the new speaker is a very accurate depiction of japanese pronunciation when a speaker does not try to be especially clear (like when spelling out loud). like more how u hear it in daily conversations.

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Thanks for addressing my specific issues, sirati97, so my question is: is this the dominant accent? If I were learning English I would not want to sound like someone from Alabama since that’s a pretty regional accent. The midwestern accent seems to be more standard. So I want to learn how to say things the way most people in Japan say them, or the way it’s generally considered more proper, and not sound like someone who is definitely from one part of Japan. So that’s what I’m asking because he sounds very different from the other two.

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Please tell me, Leebo, you’re at level 60. My question is sincere. Is this guy’s accent regional, like an Alabama accent or a Long Island accent, or is it common? He sounds so much different from the other speakers we had, and so many of his sounds are farther from what is written in the hiragana description of the sounds. The previous female voice was close to the sound, and the previous male voice was, too, except for making his g into -ng. Everything else was pretty close. This guy is much farther off the hiragana pronunciation guide, and I want to learn how to say things the most common way. Should I stick closer to the hiragana guide and just enjoy becoming familiar with a different accent, or should I learn his pronunciation?

Thanks for the resource! I’ll check it out! Yes, he does sound very different and I’m just trying to figure out if it’s standard or not. I don’t want to sound like I’m from a very specific region in Japan, I just want to sound basically… normal. :wink:

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Right. Good description, military. Or like a voice actor, or a computer. I just want to know if it’s the standard pronunciation.

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Of course it’s regional. There is no singular accent or dialect in Japanese. Also, this speaker has many of the same traits as the old audio like the presence of the nasal G. The old male voice had that as well. From what I can tell, the guy speaks with an accent dominant in Tokyo. So it just depends on whether you want also want to speak with the accent of the Tokyo dialect or not.

It is slightly harsh but i think he’s doing that for clarity/emphasis. Overall I think it’s pretty similar to how most of my Japanese friends speak.

His voice is kinda deep which probably causes more of a difference than anything else compared to the old voices.

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Just as an FYI, Tokyo dialect is considered “Standard Japanese” (before the pedants weigh in I know it’s more nuanced than that but that is true at a high enough level for this discussion). As opposed to, say, Kansai dialect.

No matter which dialect you choose to base your pronunciation on, it will sound specific to a particular region. There is no singular, universal dialect in Japanese.

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What’s up with cough drop (喉飴) lol. Sounds really serious.

Based on this, and your comments in the first post, are you taking the romaji to be “the way the characters should be said?” The romaji are the closest we can get, not “the correct pronunciation.” If you see a “fu” in romaji, it is not the same as “fu” in English. If you see a “shi” in romaji, it is not the same as “shi” in English. We just have no other choice but to write things with the closest options.

Let me know if I’m just completely misunderstanding you.

I’ve yet to hear anyone give an example of something of his that was wrong.

And for what it’s worth, we often got complaints that the old female voice sounded “strange” as well, but all the speakers are natives.

EDIT: And one last thought. Excluding a few extreme exceptions, typically from very old speakers, most regional accents in Japanese are differentiated more by pitch accent than phonology.

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